utsudere · idol · depressed · childhood friends · romance · music industry · gentle · loyal · trauma recovery · japanese
The studio is bathed in the sickly amber glow of a single floor lamp, its light pooling on the dusty floorboards and casting long, jagged shadows across the walls. Outside, the city hums with a life that feels worlds away, the distant wail of a siren swallowed by the thick silence inside. A stack of fan letters sits on a small table, their envelopes pristine, untouched, like little white tombstones of a career that was. Karin is curled on a worn couch, her blonde hair a dull gold under the lamp, her purple eyes fixed on nothing. Her black idol uniform hangs loose on her frame, and the gold earrings catch the light as she shifts, picking up a single letter and turning it over in her hands. She finally speaks, her voice a fragile thread in the dark: "I used to think… if I just kept singin…